About the author

I am Mark de Vries, a 35-year-old lay Catholic from the Netherlands. I have been Catholic (and a Christian) since my baptism at the start of Easter of 2007, so experience and a lifelong education in the faith are not things I can fall back on. As a consequence I write as an interested layman with no basis in anything else than my short life as a Catholic.

About this blog

I am a Dutch Catholic from the north of the Netherlands. In this blog I wish to provide accurate information on current affairs in the Church and the relation with society. It is important for Catholics to have knowledge about their own faith and Church, especially since these are frequently misrepresented in many places. My blog has two directions, although I use only English in my writings: on the one hand, I want to inform Dutch faithful - hence the presence of a page with Dutch translations of texts which I consider interesting or important -, and on the other hand, I want to inform the wider world of what is going on in the Church in the Netherlands.

It is sometimes tempting to be too negative about such topics. I don't want to do that: my approach is an inherently positive one, and loyal to the Magisterium of the Church. In many quarters this is an unfamiliar idea: criticism is often the standard approach to the Church, her bishops and priests and other representatives. I will be critical when that is warranted, but it is not my standard approach.

For a personal account about my reasons for becoming and remaining Catholic, go read my story: Why am I Catholic?

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Sancta Maria, hortus conclusus, ora pro nobis!

Sancte Domenico Savio, ora pro nobis!

Pope Francis

Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Primate of Italy, Metropolitan Archbishop of the Province of Rome, Sovereign of the Vatican City State, Servant of the Servants of God

Bishop Gerard de Korte

Bishop of Groningen-Leeuwarden

Willem Cardinal Eijk

Cardinal-Priest of San Callisto, Metropolitan Archbishop of Utrecht

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College of Cardinals

Tag: giovanni cardinal re

It would seem clear that one of these days (perhaps during tomorrow’s Angelus or Wednesday’s general audience) Pope Francis will announce who he intends to make cardinals in the consistory of 22 February. How many and who is anyone’s guess, but perhaps this is reason to take a look at how the College of Cardinals will change in 2014.

In order to max out the College at 120 electors, the Holy Father may appoint as many as 14 new cardinals or he may choose to appoint even more, as the upper limit established by Pope Paul VI is a flexible one (Pope John Paul II once made it as large as 135). The number of 14 is established by the fact that on the eve of the consistory there will be 106 electors. On 1 January, Raúl Cardinal Vela Chiriboga, emeritus Archbishop of Quito, turned 80. Below is the list of cardinals who will do likewise in 2014.

That is a total of 11 cardinals who will age out of the group of electors, which may mean, depending on how many new cardinals will be created in February, a next consistory could take place in the spring or summer of 2015. Of these eleven, seven were created by Pope John Paul II and the remaining four by Pope Benedict XVI.

The cardinals have wrapped up their final General Congregation and we are now only one day away from the big event. And to think that only one month ago Pope Benedict surprised us all with his announcement that he would abdicate. It’s been quite the ride.

Now to look forward to the coming days. In his blog – a companion piece to that great resource GCatholic.com – Gabriel Chow presents the main events of the conclave. Apart from tomorrow, a typical conclave day will consist of four voting rounds – the “scrutinies” or ballots.

Tomorrow, the first day of the conclave, is taken up by several preparatory events. In the early morning the cardinals will move from their current lodgings all over Rome to the Domus Sanctae Marthae, where they will live throughout the conclave. Rooms were assigned by lot. At left a view of the simple suites available to the cardinals.

At 10am tomorrow, the cardinals, electors and non-electors alike, will offer a Mass “Pro eligendoRomano Pontifice”, or for the election of the Roman Pontiff. The Dean of the College, Angelo Cardinal Sodano will give the homily and the Mass will be chiefly in Italian. The booklet for the celebration is available here.

Tomorrow afternoon, the cardinals will head to the Pauline chapel in the Apostolic palace. At 4:30pm, they will walk to the Sistine Chapel, where they will all take the oath and the first round of voting will take place. The cardinals will be seated according to precedence, as they have during the General Congregations, but they will enter the Sistine Chapel in reverse order. This means that James Cardinal Harvey, the junior Cardinal Deacon will be first, and Giovanni Cardinal Re will close the line. Dutch Cardinal Wim Eijk will be fairly forward in the line, after the 30 Cardinal-Deacons and 8 Cardinal-Priests that come after him in precedence. Immediately preceding and following him are Cardinals Betori and Duka. At right, a photo of workmen readying the Sistine Chapel for the conclave.

The long form of the oath, as presented below, will be recited by all cardinals together. Each cardinal will then come forward and, with his hand on the Gospels, confirm the oath.

“We, the Cardinal electors present in this election of the Supreme Pontiff promise, pledge and swear, as individuals and as a group, to observe faithfully and scrupulously the prescriptions contained in the Apostolic Constitution of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II, Universi Dominici Gregis, published on 22 February 1996. We likewise promise, pledge and swear that whichever of us by divine disposition is elected Roman Pontiff will commit himself faithfully to carrying out the munus Petrinum of Pastor of the Universal Church and will not fail to affirm and defend strenuously the spiritual and temporal rights and the liberty of the Holy See. In a particular way, we promise and swear to observe with the greatest fidelity and with all persons, clerical or lay, secrecy regarding everything that in any way relates to the election of the Roman Pontiff and regarding what occurs in the place of the election, directly or indirectly related to the results of the voting; we promise and swear not to break this secret in any way, either during or after the election of the new Pontiff, unless explicit authorization is granted by the same Pontiff; and never to lend support or favour to any interference, opposition or any other form of intervention, whereby secular authorities of whatever order and degree or any group of people or individuals might wish to intervene in the election of the Roman Pontiff.”

“And I, N. Cardinal N., do so promise, pledge and swear.So help me God and these Holy Gospels which I touch with my hand.”

Unlike I mentioned before, the “extra omnes!” will then be called by the Papal Master of Ceremonies, Msgr. Guido Marini, and the doors be closed. Only then, will Cardinal Grech address the cardinals “concerning the grave duty incumbent on them and thus on the need to act with right intention for the good of the Universal Church”.

The first vote can then take place, although this is optional. The first ballot may be postponed to Wednesday. It is expected that the cardinal will pray Vespers together at 7 and return to the Domus Sanctae Marthae half an hour later.

We will most likely see the first puff of smoke – if there has been a vote – from the chimney at 8pm, and no one expects it to be anything else than black.

Part of the events, such as the Mass, the walk to the Sistine Chapel and the chimney smoke can be viewed live via the Vatican player. I will share any other means of watching the proceedings via Twitter as they become available.

Just before Msgr. Guido Marini sends everyone who is not a cardinal elector out of the Sistine Chapel, on the first day of the conclave, the assembled cardinals will hear a sermon by a prelate who is specifically selected for the job. For this edition of the papal election the choice has fallen on Prosper Cardinal Grech, the 87-year-old expert in Patristics, who was created a cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI in February 2012.

He himself is not an elector, so he will leave the Chapel after he has finished his preaching, but just like the fact that the over-80 cardinals participate in the General Congregations, this is an expression of the fact that the older members of the College of Cardinals certainly retain their influence and responsibility, even if they no longer have the duty to cast a vote.

Cardinal Grech is an Augustinian friar from Malta who specialises in studies of the Bible, hermeneutics and Patristics. He has an interesting connection with previous conclaves: he heard the confession of Cardinal Montini shortly before the latter became Pope Paul VI in 1963.

Depending on the length of the conclave, the cardinals will also hear addresses by Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran after three voting days, Cardinal Godfried Danneels after another seven ballots, and Cardinal Giovanni Re after yet another seven ballots have gone by without a result. These three cardinals are the senior Cardinal Deacon, Cardinal Priest and Cardinal Bishop respectively.

In a sede vacante, nothing, it seems, is permanent, not even the daily running of the Holy See. While Cardinals Bertone and Sodano, as Camerlengo and Dean of the College of Cardinals respectively, have certain specific duties, these do not extend as far as the duties that a Pope or the Curia in normal circumstances would have. We are all waiting, in this period, for normalcy to resume, but for that we need a visible head, a new Supreme Pontiff.

In the meantime, starting this morning, the cardinals are presented with the current affairs in the Church during their General Congregations and if a situation calls for it they can act together, or task one of their own to perform his duties as he would when there is a Pope. In the case of Cardinal Bertone, he is aided by three cardinals, one each from the orders of bishops, priests and deacons, in managing the Holy See. These three cardinals are appointed for three days only, another indication of the impermanence of their authority. For the first three-day period, which started yesterday and will end tomorrow, the names of Cardinals Giovanni Re, Crescenzio Sepe and Franc Rode were drawn by lot.

The actual decisions and actions undertaken during the General Congregations, and of course the conclave, are subject to an oath of secrecy that the cardinals made yesterday morning. Cardinal Wilfrid Napier (pictured above with Cardinal Collins before the start of the first Congregation), who is perhaps the most active tweeting cardinal at the moment, told his followers this morning: “Given that Pledge of Confidentiality covers matters discussed in General Congregations, only very general comments can be made. Keep praying.” Several cardinals have already shut down their Twitter account or gone radio silent until after the conclave. A full list of twittering cardinals can be found here.

But in the meantime, while much may get done, we are still awaiting the arrival of the final cardinal electors. Only after they arrive can a date for the conclave be decided upon. Until then, with the final arrived expected to be Hong Kong’s Cardinal John Tong Hon sometime tomorrow, the cardinals will continue meeting once a day in the morning.

Today, all the cardinals of the Church received the official letter summoning them to Rome. Cardinal Sodano, as dean of the College of Cardinals, signed the letter. Cardinal Simonis, emeritus archbishop of Utrecht, was one of the cardinals who received the summons, although, like many others, he is already in Rome. The image below shows the letter in the hands of the cardinal, who won’t be able to vote in the conclave, as he is over the age of 80. But all cardinals, elector or not, are expected to take their responsibilities in managing the goods and needs of the Church and the faithful during the sede vacante, as well as preparing for the conclave.Cardinal Sodano’s letter invites the cardinals to the first two General Congregations on Monday. A date for the conclave may be decided upon then, but that is by no means certain. All indications are that the cardinals want time to talk and think.

The electors number 117, although two of them have chosen to remain at home. So here they are, the 115 cardinal electors who will soon be entering the conclave, which they will not be leaving until they have elected a new Supreme Pontiff. As Emeritus Pope Benedict (how odd it is to write that!) said yesterday morning, the new Pope is among them.

A short primer on who’s who among the electors, ordered by precedence (and from left to right and top to bottom, starting at top left and ending at bottom right, in the collage above):

Giovanni Cardinal Re, Prefect emeritus of the Congregation for Bishops

Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone, Secretary of State and Chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church

Antonios Cardinal Naguib, Patriarch emeritus of Alexandria of the Copts

Béchara Cardinal Raï, Patriarch of Antioch of the Maronites

Godfried Cardinal Danneels, Archbishop emeritus of Mechelen-Brussels

Joachim Cardinal Meisner, Archbishop of Köln

Nicolás Cardinal López Rodríguez, Archbishop of Santo Domingo

Roger Cardinal Mahony, Archbishop emeritus of Los Angeles

Jaime Cardinal Ortega y Alamino, Archbishop of Havana

Jean-Claude Cardinal Turcotte, Archbishop emeritus of Montréal

Vinko Cardinal Puljic, Archbishop of Vrhbosna

Juan Cardinal Sandoval Íñiguez, Archbishop emeritus of Guadalajara

Antonio Cardinal Rouco Varela, Archbishop of Madrid

Dionigi Cardinal Tettamanzi, Archbishop emeritus of Milan

Polycarp Cardinal Pengo, Archbishop of Dar-es-Salaam

Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna

Norberto Cardinal Rivera Carrera, Archbishop of Mexico

Francis Cardinal George, Archbishop of Chicago

Zenon Cardinal Grocholewski, President of the Congregation for Catholic Education

Crescenzio Cardinal Sepe, Archbishop of Naples

Walter Cardinal Kasper, President emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity

Ivan Cardinal Dias, Prefect emeritus of the Congregation fo the Evangelisation of Peoples

Now that we have gotten somewhat used to yesterday’s news, and all speculation has, well, not died down, but channeled into a few set directions, here’s a look at the major players in the coming sede vacante period.

The Apostolic Penitentiary, concerned with questions of conscience from the faithful and the pressing matters related to it, will continue to function during the sedevacante. Cardinal Manuel Monteiro de Castro, who leads the office, will remain in office likewise.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone (pictured) will remain on as Camerlengo. He will head the management of the goods and finances of the Holy See. He will also chair the daily meetings of the College of Cardinals for the daily affairs of the Church. Upon the election of the new pope, he will accompany him to the papal apartments and hand him the keys. Cardinal Bertone will also declare the result of every ballot during the conclave. Upon his invitation, the cardinals will meet for discussion and reflection when needed. The vice-chamberlain, Archbishop Pier Luigi Celata, will work with him outside the conclave.

During the sede vacante, the archpriests of the papal basilicas will take over the Pope’s liturgical duties. They are Cardinal Agostino Vallini (pictured) for St. John Lateran, Cardinal Angelo Comastri for St. Peter’s, Cardinal James Harvey for St. Paul-Outside-the-Walls and Cardinal Santos Abril y Castelló for St. Mary Major.

Also involved in the papal liturgies during the sede vacante are the Master of Ceremonies, Msgr. Guido Marini, and the Almoner of His Holiness, Archbishop Guido Pozzo.

The pastoral care of the Diocese of Rome will be the responsibility of the Vicars-General: Cardinal Agostino Vallini. for Rome and Cardinal Angelo Comastri for the Vatican City State.

After the cardinals have entered the Sistine Chapel for the conclave, and after they have all taken the oath, Msgr. Guido Marini will call “Extra omnes!”. He will distribute the ballot papers to the cardinals and then leave the chapel..

Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, in place of the Cardinal-Dean (Cardinal Sodano is 85 and therefore too old to take part in the conclave), will announce the start of the first ballot after any remaining questions have been answered. Cardinal Re will also ask the newly elected Pope if he accepts his election. If Cardinal Re himself is elected, that task falls to Cardinal Bertone.

Cardinal James Harvey (pictured), as the junior Cardinal-Deacon, will lock the doors of the Sistine Chapel before the first ballot. He will be responsible for who enters and leaves during the voting: assistants to those cardinals who may be too ill to be in the Sistine Chapel can leave and return to collect those cardinals’ ballots.

Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, as the College of Cardinals’ Protodeacon (the most senior Cardinal-Deacon) will have the honour to announce the “habemus papam” to the masses on St. Peter’s Square.

The Curia of the Church will in many ways cease to function once the Pope has abdicated. Only some pressing matters may be handled by the College of Cardinals, but she is not allowed to do anything that is normally under a Pope’s authority.

Come the evening of 28 February, the Church will have to make do without a Supreme Pontiff. For how long, we don’t know, and it is certainly a different situation than the last time this happened.

A pope stepping down, a conclave without mourning a deceased Holy Father, but with the all the chaos, temporary suspensions of functions and preparations to gather all the cardinals and prepare the Sistine Chapel that come with the election of a new pope.

So what can we expect in the coming weeks, which will certainly be interesting, emotional and exciting?

Things will change at the time that Pope Benedict XVI has indicated: 8pm on Thursday 28 February. At that time, he will no longer be pope, and the See of Peter will be officially vacant. Pope Benedict XVI will then no longer be called that, although it remains to be seen how we will refer to him in the future. The former Pope will remove to Castel Gandolfo and, at a later date, he will take up residence in a monastery within the Vatican walls.

A limited set of duties normally held by the Pope, will fall to the College of Cardinals. The heads of the Curial offices will resign as well, although they will be reinstated by the new pope, as is standard. The exceptions are Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone as Camerlengo – he will continue to manage the properties of the Church; Cardinal Manuel Monteiro de Castro as Major Penitentiary; and all Holy See representatives across the world. The vicars-general of the Diocese of Rome, Cardinals Angelo Comastri and Agostino Vallini, will also continue in their pastoral duties.

The major event of the sede vacante will of course be the conclave to elect the new Pope. During today’s press briefing, Fr. Federico Lombardi said that this will take place in mid-March, and we’ll have a new Pope before Easter. Barring any deaths, 117 cardinal electors will travel to Rome to participate in the conclave.

Several cardinals and other officials will have specific duties in the conclave. The Dean of the College Cardinals, being over 80, will not be present, so his duties will be taken over by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re. Also accompanying the cardinals will be Msgr. Guido Marini, the Papal Master of Ceremonies. He will lock the door of the Sistine Chapel, after calling “Extra omnes!”, “Everybody (who is not an elector), out!”. Archbishop Lorenzo Baldisseri, the secretary of the College of Cardinals, will also be present. Neither of them will, however, attend the actual voting.

The conclave may take several days and will take place in utter secrecy. Although the electors are not obliged to elect one of their own, they most probably will. On this page I provide a list of members of the College of Cardinals. The names in bold are those of cardinal electors at this moment. One name will be removed from that list, as Cardinal Lubomyr Husar will reach the age of 80 before the Pope’s retirement. A closer look at the electors and some guesses about the future will follow later.

Photo credit: [1] Visibly aged since his election, Pope Benedict pictured during a visit to a seminary in Rome, last week.